A British-born novelist, children's playwright, and poet, educated in Point Levy, Quebec, and Sarnia, Ontario, where she and her sisters operated a school for ladies.

Walker published poetry widely in newspapers on both sides of the border before collecting them in Leaves from the Backwoods in 1861-62. She returned to England to work for her cousin, Margaret Oliphant, a well-known novelist, and edited her Autobiography and Letters in 1899 this time under her married name, Mrs. Harry Coghill...